BONSAI 

What if you could harness the power of the free market to solve the problems of poverty, hunger, and inequality?

To some, it sounds impossible.

But Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus is doing exactly that.  Bonsai celebrates Yunus’ extraordinary humanitarian work, which started when he simply lent $27 to 42 people out of his own pocket.  As the founder of Grameen Bank, Yunus pioneered microcredit, the innovative banking program that provides poor people - mainly women - with small loans they use to launch

businesses and lift their families out of poverty.  In the past thirty years, microcredit has spread to every continent and benefited over 100 million families.  His Grameen Bank currently lends to one out of every 1,000 people on earth and with a 98% rate of return – unheard of in the financial world.

But Yunus didn’t stop there.  Now, Yunus goes beyond microcredit to pioneer the idea of social business - a completely new way to use the creative vibrancy of business to tackle social problems from poverty and pollution to inadequate health care and lack of education. Bonsai shows how Yunus - in partnership with some of the world’s most visionary businesses - is launching purposely designed social ventures.  From collaborating with Danone to produce affordable, nutritious yogurt for malnourished children in Bangladesh to building eyecare hospitals that will save hundreds of thousands of poor people from blindness. 

While Yunus didn’t invent the notion of doing business for social good – it is a concept that needed a leader, Yunus has become that person. The Millennium Development Goal to cut poverty in half by 2015 is one of the most courageous goals mankind has ever set for itself.

The question is how?